‘Clarissa’ Review: Sophie Okonedo Gets the Flowers Herself in Modern Day ‘Mrs. Dalloway’ [B+] Cannes

In Clarissa, a group of friends are sitting for lunch at a vacation home in Abraka, Nigeria when their topic of conversation shifts to politics. One character asks a question that spotlights the group’s position of privilege: can you be truly free in the midst of a military regime?

The film, directed by sibling Nigerian filmmakers Chuko and Arie Usiri, asks the question via its modern adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s novel, Mrs Dalloway. Instead of WWI England, the film’s Clarissa (Sophie Okonedo in the present, India Amarteifio in the past) lives in modern-day Lagos, having come of age during Nigeria’s difficult transition into a democracy in the 1990s. Clarissa is preparing to host a party for Nigerian high society and has invited her distant childhood friends: Peter (David Oyelowo, Toheeb Jimoh), Sally (Nikki Amuka-Bird, Ayo Edebiri), and Ugo (Danny Sapani, Kehinde Cardoso). As she meticulously sets up her soiree, she reflects on their shared childhood and the circumstances that led them to lose touch in the years since. 

The Usiri brothers approach Clarissa’s story with a free-flowing elegance that sharply but beautifully contrasts their protagonist’s polite rigidity and Nigeria’s political volatility. Reflections are a common visual motif throughout the film, sometimes through a mirror, other times via the surface of a body of water. It functions as a helpful device to blend flashbacks and present-day scenes together. It also immediately suggests a disconnect between who the characters appear to be and who they really are. Is Clarissa meant to be a laissez-faire woman on the arm of an influential man, or does she seek more, from her politics and her romantic partners? 

The answers unfold methodically, as the Usiris float between the past and present. Our understanding of Clarissa and her friends is largely framed by what they don’t say to each other. They are as honest as they know how to be, but that honesty is boxed within high society gentility. Clarissa can wax assertive about Nigeria’s colonialist underpinnings, but when confronted with it in practice, like when her father humiliates a servant for not wearing gloves, she gives in with a gentle murmur. 

In the present, Clarissa retains the same servants and deploys the same sternness as her father but at a gentler register. She can express her palpable attraction to Sally, but only in the cover of night, with mere hints during the day (like her hurt reaction to Sally calling her a snob). That is freedom in Clarissa’s world. The Usiris wrap an engrossing blanket of emotional and political security around the group. While it’s not outright false, as Clarissa and friends truly believe in it, it also isn’t reflective of Nigeria’s political truths.

Those truths come to life through Septimus (Fortune Nwafor), an officer in the Nigerian army and the husband of Clarissa’s dressmaker. His story also operates between the past, where he is a sparkling, charismatic young man fighting for what he believes, and the present, where he silently suffers from PTSD and depression. Clarissa and Septimus live very different lives and share a tangential connection, which is to the film’s minor detriment. While Septimus’s struggles are compelling on their own and help contextualize the world that Clarissa can willfully ignore, their tenuous connection feels either superfluous or distracting from hers. 

The excellent performances ironically contribute to that disconnect. As a young Clarissa, India Amarteifio is luminous in her repression, her face beautifully conveying the tension and confusion that comes with living two lives at once, and not knowing which is real. Sophie Okonedo carries the torch very well into the present day, adding a world-weariness to Clarissa’s interactions and splitting it open when she encounters situations that veer closely to her past. Toheeb Jimoh and David Oyelowo are similarly in sync, with Jimoh subtly capturing Peter’s uncertainty and Oyelowo reflecting his open yearning for genuine connection. On the other side of the film, Fortune Nwafor presents a great, tragic portrait of a man not realizing he’s spiraling towards ruin, his eyes drawing you into Septimus’s past charm and present torrid discomfort. You wish that we had more time with all of the actors and their characters to dig even deeper into the motivations guiding their performances’ subtle nuances.

Clarissa takes some time to answer its central question about the nature of freedom within rigid sociopolitical structures. The languid approach has structural and thematic purpose, and an answer in and of itself. Chuko and Arie Usuri ultimately find that there is no real freedom in any regime, whether it is exacting physical, emotional, or psychological violence against you. You can try, but the results vary wildly based on cultural and economic station. Even if you land on the advantageous side, you ultimately will, paraphrasing Clarissa at her much ballyhooed party, put your great dreams aside to settle. It is a bittersweet, astonishingly truthful observation that can land anywhere, from 20th-century London to 21st-century Lagos.

Grade: B+

This review is from the 2026 Cannes Film Festival where Clarissa had its world premiere in the Critics Week section. NEON will release the film in the U.S.